


Best Served Cold

by taranoire



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood Magic, M/M, Mild Gore, Protectiveness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 20:16:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3950266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taranoire/pseuds/taranoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Hawke rescues Fenris from a group of blood mages and rouge templars, he shows no mercy. Unfortunately all acts of passion come at a cost. </p><p>Canon divergence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Served Cold

**Author's Note:**

> This features a dark, aggressive Hawke, but his relationship with Fenris is sappy as fuck. His name in my mind is Desmond Hawke, but I use only his surname so that you may imagine him as you wish.

Hawke carries Fenris in his arms from the Wounded Coast through the gates of the Gallows and finally into Hightown. 

He must look terrifying: he is, after all, Kirkwall’s infamous “secret” apostate, with an elf gently cradled in his arms like game. Blood and cooked bits of human flesh cake his robes and his boots leave a grimy, gritty trail in the streets. His hair is disheveled and slick with sweat. 

It begins to rain as he reaches the door to his empty estate. For two years he has lived alone here with his fortune, his servant girl, and his dog. The space haunts him, and he puts most of his coin into gambling and drink, not its upkeep–three of its bedrooms remain locked at all times like empty mausoleums. Fenris will not call the place his, not yet, but when he is ready Hawke intends to create a real home for him. Though that might well depend on if the elf ever wakes up. 

Hawke cradles Fenris close in the empty house and brings him upstairs. With gentle hands he lays him on the bed, a bed that they have shared–intimately and innocently, soft touches and softer words–more times than he can know. 

Fenris’ body sinks like a stone into the duvet and his head drops limp against the pillow. Hawke would be loathe to call Fenris delicate but there is something soft about him now, ethereal in his untroubled sleeping face. Hawke has tried dissipating the spell with his own magic, has tried quickening the elf’s blood, has called his name a thousand times–but there is nothing, no whisper of consciousness, no flicker in the dark. 

Hawke waves his hand at the air, lighting the heavy ceiling candelabra with his magic. Its flames cast shadowed puppetry on the walls. 

Hawke presses the back of his hand to Fenris’ head. He is cool, dry, and to all appearances deep in pleasant slumber. But there is dark magic at work here, and Hawke knows that if left in this state for the spell to run its course, Fenris will not wake. He knows blood magic, knows this spell, infamous as it is even in the fairy tales that Fenris secretly enjoys reading. ( _“And so she and her kingdom lingered, unaging, in that space between waking and dreaming for one hundred years….”_ )

Hawke closes his eyes, livid that anyone would bind Fenris–his heart, his love–in such a cage. He wants to believe that they couldn’t have known the truth, but they had to have watched him–both of them–to figure out the best way to injure his heart. A hired guard would not let hands linger on his waist, would not return secretive smiles. A mere mercenary would not enter the Champion’s estate at dusk and leave at the pearly edge of dawn.  And few in Kirkwall will ever forget the day that an elf with a crimson handkerchief tied around his wrist arranged a duel between the Arishok and an apostate. 

Hawke earned his favor with the eyes of an entire city watching. 

Hawke runs a finger hurriedly over the spines of a few dozen books. Some of them are mundane, merely lending the impression that he is at all academic and not just an unlucky Fereldan farmboy. Some of them are collections of folk tales and children’s stories that Fenris has devoured with ever-increasing voracity. And some are entirely misleading. He selects one–a leather-bound tome without a title–and thumbs through it. There. 

When the templar boy told him that Fenris had been taken, the initial wave of despair had almost been too much to endure. A thousand nightmares and dark daydreams could not have prepared him for the horror of losing yet another that he held close to his heart. He thought of Fenris, high on adrenaline and fear, cutting through rogue templars and mages in a desperate attempt at escape. He thought of him struggling, biting, lyrium flaring while they tried to hold him down and keep him still. The expected a lamb and found a wolf. 

These mages honestly thought that Hawke would be sympathetic towards their cause? Just because he shares their curse, their plague? 

Hawke presses his forehead to Fenris’ and opens his mind to the influences of the Fade both dark and divine. He pours a little of himself (golden-white and red) into Fenris (bright, bright blue screaming with silver agony), and pulls at whatever malaise has him in its grip. He winces at the sudden sharp stab of pain, of darkness, of suffocation. In the smoke, he detects him, his life dim but enduring like sunlight through a mesh screen. 

It is no demon, thank the Maker. It hisses and it writhes, a mass of noise and ill-will, but Fenris is merely trapped in a murky portion of the Fade: bound quietly in his own dreams. That can be solved quickly enough, but Fenris will never forgive him for how it must be done.

He is no stranger to this magic, after all. 

Without flinching he cuts his hand on the sharp blade attached to his staff, reopening an old scar. Blood drips down his wrist and he steels himself before drawing power from the wound, dizzy as he pours his own darkness, his own malaise, into one that he loves. The Veil solidifies in his mind as a tangible curtain of spiderweb silk. He tears the shroud away, reaches in, and clutches at the brightness of Fenris’ consciousness, feeling his own slipping. 

With a screeching wail the spell dies. Hawke stumbles backwards and nearly collapses, taking deep, gasping gulps of air. He clutches his bleeding hand and leans against the wall for support, nauseous and exhausted from the effort of reversing such a powerful strain of magic. He nearly drowned in its depths. 

The lyrium in Fenris’ skin glows like the moon in the darkness.  His eyes–deep green and frightened–flutter open, and then his gaze flits abound the room, searching for a threat. Sweat drips down his brow, his breaths frantic, uneven. He looks down at his open palm; his fingers twitch uselessly when he tries to move them.

“You’re safe,“ Hawke says. Fenris looks up at him through half-lidded eyes, swallowing hard, apparently struggling to even move his head. "There was–a spell. I’ve dissipated it but there might be a few lingering effects. You should be alright.”

"What happened?” Fenris asks, trembling so hard that his voice shakes. There has only been one other occasion that Fenris woke with no memory of what came before it, and to experience it again must be shocking. He closes his eyes in his exhaustion, looking far more fevered than he did just ten minutes ago. 

Hawke goes to him and strokes his hair with a bloodstained hand. He quietly considers telling him a lie. It would spare him from the truth, for now, but it would not be fair. Fenris is not made of glass, and Hawke knows that if he makes any attempt to hide this from him, it will only destroy the carefully cultivated bond between them. Hawke is no saint but he will never betray Fenris’ trust. Not even to keep him safe. 

He will start slow. 

"Do you remember anything that happened?” Hawke asks. “Anything at all?”  

“I took your hound for a walk,” Fenris says. He sinks back onto the pillow. The magic has weakened and disoriented him, left him struggling to speak. “When I was done I left him in Orana’s care. I returned to the mansion. I was attacked, almost as soon as I entered the door. He put his hand over my mouth. Tried to take me. I thought he was a slaver, so I killed him. There were others. Not slavers. How many is unclear. It all runs together. I killed them all. And then…" He stops. 

“And then…?" 

He does nothing. 

"Fenris?" 

Fenris shakes his head, muscles tense as if sensing a threat. He doesn’t breathe, doesn’t speak, just trembles as if trapped in a cascade of falling ice-cold water. Hawke knows it’s more pervasive, and more unsettling, than that. He has seen this before. Sometimes, memories will come to Fenris like heartbeats, or breaths, and if he is not soothed they will overwhelm him. They leave him struggling to sort through the chaos of his head like the debris of a maelstrom. 

"Are you with me?” Hawke asks. “Can you hear me?" 

Fenris nods, and in return, Hawke squeezes his hand to let him know that he is here and does not ever plan on leaving him. Sometimes, even he is capable of gentleness, but Fenris is one of the only people who can coax it out of him. 

“I know this magic,” Fenris says. “A woman cast it. At some point, a weapon grazed me, and she used the open wound to exploit my blood. Danarius used a similar technique…on me. It did not leave me unconscious, as her spell did, but paralyzed, unable to speak or move. Perhaps it was a weaker form." 

Hawke seethes. "Not exactly. It’s blood control,” he says in disgust. “Normally, a mage might use it to have the victim commit suicide or kill their ally, but this sounds more like–I don’t know, removing someone’s will entirely.” 

He takes a deep breath, and then reaches forward to brush Fenris’ hair out of his closed eyes.  At its core, blood magic is violation: it revokes the autonomy of its victims, and forever stains the souls of its perpetrators. His master would have used it to degrade him, humiliate him, make him pliant. If Danarius was not dead, Hawke would see him made Tranquil. 

Knowing this, what he has done will be difficult for Fenris to understand. 

“Who were they?” Fenris asks, moving into his touch. “What did they want with me?" 

"They weren’t after you,” Hawke says, hoping that at least this will soothe him in some small way. “They wanted me." 

Hours ago, he had been frantically combing the coast for any sign of him or his captors. He had been so terrified that he was about to lose the only person he had left. Memories flashed in his mind like sparks: father wasted away from fever, Bethany’s skull cracked open against the rocks, Carver rotting from Blight, mother’s skin cold and corpse-like, Fenris…oh, Fenris…

"Years ago I helped a group of mages escape Kirkwall,” he says. “Do you remember?” Fenris’ eyes open, and he nods slowly, saying nothing as he slowly digests this. “They came back. They started some kind of–I’m not sure, an organized rebellion, against the Chantry and the Circle. Rogue templars and blood mages fighting alongside each other. They kidnapped you. Took you to the Wounded Coast. They said that they wanted me to join them, but honestly, I think they just wanted to make an example of me." 

"By killing me." 

Hawke nods grimly. "Yes." 

"How did they know about us?" 

"I couldn’t tell you,” Hawke says. “Perhaps they saw us together? It isn’t as if I have gone to any great length to hide how I feel about you." 

"Nor I, you,” Fenris agrees. And then after a moment’s pause, “Did you take their offer? Did you…make an alliance with these blood mages?" 

Does he really think Hawke so sympathetic towards his own kind? Before this, Hawke thought he knew where to draw his lines, but uncertainty has left its mark. It is a few minutes of listening to the fire cackle in the grate before he can speak again. His voice is cracked, weathered. “When I arrived, you were unconscious on the ground, unarmed and barely breathing.  They put their hands on you. They hurt you. That  _bitch_ , Grace, was going to cut your throat, and I couldn’t–I couldn’t bear the thought of–" 

There was no room for another foolish mistake like mercy. 

"I killed every one of them,” he says. Shrill screams echo in his skull. “I burned them all alive.”

“You mentioned there were templars among them,” Fenris says. “Garrett, the guard will see it as murder.”

“If  I may borrow your words, they chose the wrong master. I have no sympathy for anyone who would try to harm you. If I could, I would kill them again.” He gets to his feet, stalking over towards the fire. It is a much more pleasant picture than the roaring, blackening inferno that devoured human flesh not hours before. Some pleaded with him. But their screeching, their desperation, the stench of their flesh, was nothing compared to lifting Fenris into his arms and carrying him away from the corpses and acrid smoke. 

When he turns back, he sees that Fenris is sitting on the edge of the bed and studying him with a quiet, disconcerting intensity. He trembles, even now, as his nerves reawaken, but he has regained the capacity for movement. It is a small victory that makes Hawke breathe easier. 

“Is something wrong?“ 

"The dark,” he says vaguely. “That a split second of carelessness could make me so vulnerable. And you, Hawke." 

"Me?" 

"You are not yourself." 

Hawke’s first instinct is to deny it, but he takes pause, and then feels sick with guilt. He looks away from him, burned by his scrutiny. Fenris is too good for him, damaged as he is, soul stained by his own sins. "I know. Today has been–taxing. I have saved us both, and yet I have never been more terrified of losing you." 

"Then let me relieve your burden: I am not yours to lose,” Fenris says. “And I would not want to see you lose yourself in an effort to preserve me. Do not misunderstand; I am glad that you killed them. They deserved nothing less, and if I had been lucid, I would gladly have dealt the necessary blows. But if you had lost me. If I had not been salvageable. Where would your wrath have ended?" 

This sobers him. In the heat of the moment, after losing yet another that he loves–who is to say Hawke would not burn all of Kirkwall to the ground in grief?

"They watched us, Fenris,” he says softly. “They watched _you_. I have more enemies than friends, here in this shithole, and I feel their numbers growing by the day. No matter what I do to protect you, no matter how far we go, there will always be someone there wanting to hurt you to get to me. I cannot bear the thought of that. I cannot endure knowing that there are people in the shadows, watching you…." 

"So let them watch,” Fenris says. “We will face them head-on, not hide like rats in the shadows.” 

“I can’t, in good consciousness. Do you think I like this? Wanting to keep you away from what you’ve been running from half your life, and never being able to? I want to make a home for you, Fenris. I want to give you safety and love and comfort and all of the things you deserve.” Hawke steps away from the mantle and crosses to him, kneeling by the bed so he can take his hands in his. “I want to take you away from here. From this. Forever." 

Fenris’ gaze drops to their entwined hands, and he frowns. "You’re bleeding." 

Hawke stares at him for a moment, lost in thought, and then curses sharply. He jerks the hand away from him, cradling it as it drips blood on the hard stone floor. "It’s just a scratch from the battle." 

"Let me see it." 

"I just need some bandages." 

He rummages in a drawer for the small box of first aid items he keeps, hands sticky with blood. His stomach twists in guilt. He needs to tell Fenris–he  _must_ tell Fenris. But he is terrified of how he will react to his lover using a former trauma as a tool to save him. Before he can create yet another fabrication, another lie, he hears Fenris creep up behind him. He drops the box, supplies scattering across the floor, and then holds onto the back of a chair for support, shaky and restless. 

He cannot look at him. 

"Sit down,” Fenris says softly. “Let me tend your hand." 

Hawke shakes his head, but does as he’s told. He sinks into the chair and watches as Fenris nimbly collects the bandages, gauze, and vials of elfroot from the floor. He puts everything back in the box and sets it on the bureau soundlessly. Then, he gets to his knees before Hawke, taking him gently by the wrist, and drips a small amount of antiseptic alcohol onto his hand. Hawke hisses through his teeth. 

"It will sting." 

"I figured that out, thanks." 

Fenris presses clean cloth against the cut until it ceases to bleed. He dabs at his palm, cleaning around the wound, and then carefully wraps his hand in bandages. He looks up. 

"Too tight?" 

"No." 

The elf nods, and finishes tying it off. Hawke tries to withdraw his hand, but Fenris’ grip only tightens.

"You used your blood to unbind me.” It is not a question–not an accusation. It is a statement of fact. 

Hawke cannot–will not–deny it. If he would go to great lengths to protect Fenris from dark magic, then he must also respect that Fenris knows what is best for himself. He bows his head. “Yes." 

Fenris’ eyes search his. 

And then, in a voice soft as the rustle of leaves, he speaks one word that Hawke will never forget: 

"Okay.”


End file.
